Revisiting a Revolution of Mexican Art in America

Anna Schapiro | The New York Review of Books | 20th July 2020

A personal take on an important, previously reviewed, show. Mexican artists who came to the US in the late 1920’s were innovators, cognizant of modernism but charting a different course. Little wonder they inspired Jackson Pollock, among others. Many enjoyed early success but, due to their communist politics, ended up with lives “of unexpected obscurity”. The social justice ideals that animated their art are now glossed over, seeming “quaint or merely pretty”.